Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1999, Síða 136
116
Part One
selves with demonstrating the antiquity of the style”.16 However, Neckel
maintained that an archaic-looking style might suggest an early date,17
and to this cautious way of putting it I see no objection.
Neckel’s reference to rudimentary stanza-building in Widsith and
other archaic poems is obviously not sufficient proof to establish the
chronological priority of the unbound type, for we have no certainty that
these stanzaic parts belong to the oldest layer of the West-Germanic
poems in question and that they are not, for instance, the result of a later
stylistic development in a pula-like text. The idea of an origin in sung
stanzas has no greater evidential weight. What matters for Neckel is
therefore the convergence of several different criteria that together con-
tribute to making a uniform impression.
One such means of dating closely connected with the different types
of binding is the varying organization of the Eddie stanza. Neckel’s study
of this phenomenon is less strietly organized than that of the types of
binding, but scattered throughout different parts of his book are a great
number of valuable observations and analyses of the construction of
stanzas in different poems. A particularly archaic form, found e.g. in
Prymskvida, is, according to Neckel, the combination of three long
lines.18 A series of stanzas consisting of two long lines (one helmingr),
frequently combined in pairs into stanzas of four long lines, which cor-
responds to the skaldic norm, is taken to be a more recent form, probably
developed through influence from skaldic poetry. Although Gudrun-
arkvida III has the same type of binding as Prymskvida, its stanzaic form
is dominated by this more recent type, which is one of the reasons
why Neckel ascribed a later date to this poem (Neckel 1908: 51-52).
Whereas the binding in Prymskvida represents the level of development
in the poet’s own age, in Gudrunarkvida III it is thus interpreted as the
result of influence from tradition. Prymskvida is a uniformly old-
looking poem, while Gudrunarkvida III contains elements pointing in
16 “[...] daher konnen wir hohes alter niemals mit der sicherheit behaupten wie jungen ur-
sprung und miissen uns bisweilen begniigen, altertiimlichkeit des stils festzustellen”
(Neckel 1908: 37).
17 “Die einfachheit des stiles und die verwantschaft mit altertiimlichen westg. typen sind
wichtige indicien. Sie beweisen zum mindesten hohe altertiimlichkeit und legen die ver-
mutung hohen alters nahe genug” (Neckel 1908: 49).
18 Cf. the index, “Strophe”, “Strophenansatz” and “Dreizeiler” (Neckel 1908: 504,498).